This book represents the first monograph study of Jesuit religious theater in China and its connections to the commemoration of the Society's martyrs of the late Qing. It considers the Society's efforts to rehabilitate the Western imagination of China and the Jesuit aim of stirring emotional responses to stage performances that inculcate Catholic and Western sensibilities.

By connecting the religious underpinnings of the Spiritual Exercises to the sumptuous Baroque expressions of Jesuit drama performed on China's stages, this important work explores an entirely new area of research that weaves together several modes of analysis - visual, cultural, and nationalistic.